One of the things that has people angry about the Google Pixel is the Tensor chip which has proven to be slower than the processing chips in competing devices. This includes the Pixel 9 Pro XL with Tensor G4 which in daily use has performance similar to the Nothing Phone (3a) with Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chip. Most recently, the Pixel has received an Android update that boosts GPU performance by up to 62%.
According to a report by Android Authority, every time Google uses a new Tensor chip on Pixel devices they use an old driver. For example, Tensor G1, G2, and G3 use GPUs from February 2024 and Tensor G4 uses GPUs from December 2023. This performance improvement is clearly visible in Geekbench 6 due to the higher Vulkan API benchmark test scores.
The performance boost is said to be up to 23% for the Pixel 6a, 62% for the Pixel 7a, 31% for the Pixel 8, and 32% on the Pixel 9. The latest Android 15 update uses the r51p0 GPU driver that Arm released on August 14, 2024, while the latest Android 16 beta update uses r52p0 that Arm released on March 10, 2024.
If you're using a Pixel 6 and above or any Pixel device with a Tensor chip that has been updated to the latest Android 15 with Pixel Drop or Android 16 Beta 3 you'll experience this new performance.